Don’t Let Your Marriage Become Torture

So to start this new year off right and on a note that is brimming with vitality and levity, we’d like to talk to you today about torture. Yes, that’s right. Torture. We meant it more in a metaphorical sense rather than a literal one because unless you guys are into some really kinky stuff, most of us haven’t experienced literal torture. Ripping off fingernails, hitting someone really hard in the balls, knocking someone unconscious and then reviving them again… That’s all pretty nasty stuff that we’d really rather not go into.

We all have activities that we would consider to be tortuous. Things that we need to do, but that are so mind-numbing or unpleasant to us that we would love to find ways to get around them. They don’t even need to be things that we do. They could be things that other people do. Maybe someone at work has a really obnoxious laugh or wears aftershave that is too heavy. Maybe one of your in-laws loves to make the same joke over and over again, asking if you get it until the very cadence of strung together words has been memorized and you cringe whenever they begin to speak about it.

Or maybe your idea of torture is just being in a broken marriage that you don’t know how to fix.

You don’t want to get a divorce. There are still sparks of the marriage that you loved in there and you still have feelings for your spouse. Whatever you’re missing in your marriage, there are always solutions. Will they completely fix your problem? No. Marriages are too complex for a simple band aid solution, but they’ll allow you to begin focusing in on the core of your problems and can ease the stress that comes along with issues within a marriage.

We recommend affairs pretty highly and that should come to no surprise of anyone who has found their way onto this blog. Marriage is a beautiful thing, but socially enforced monogamy is definitely not on our list of favourite things. When a couple chooses to be monogamous and both have an equal desire to do so we think that’s wonderful, but when things become fragmented and monogamy is just not working for you and your marriage, many people remain monogamous (and unhappy) due to societal pressures.

As insidious as torture, a lack of fulfillment in something whether it is a job or a marriage can drag your overall mood down. When you feel your mood dropping or like your life is stagnating, it’s a good practice to be introspective and weed out the root of the problem. Once you have the problem figured out, you can begin to look for solutions of it. You want to make sure that you’re not mistaking the symptoms for the problem itself, however. General dissatisfaction may be a general symptom of what you’re feeling, but if the root of the problem is lack of sex in your marriage then the solution to that issue will be much different than if say… your dissatisfaction is rooted in a dead end job or a lack of intellectual stimulation.

As always, do what you think is best for you, but make sure that you think things through so you can start off the new year right.